Sadza

The ship docks early at Valparaíso. We have a few issues with our on-board account to resolve. Eventually we say goodbye to the MS Veendam, which has carried us to Antarctica and back. We sailed 3588 nautical miles, which is 4128 miles or 6645 kilometres. We board the bus for our tour. Sylvia, our guide, turns out to have dual Chilean/Canadian citizenship. (She spends part of the year teaching Spanish in Montreal, where her daughter lives.) It's a grey, dreary and fairly cool day with occasional drizzle, but Sylvia promises that the weather will be beautiful when we reach the valley. Valparaíso is a port city built up from the sea into the sides of rocky hills. The way many of the buildings are built into and around sheer cliffs defies belief. The bus starts at ... read more

Well, this is the last day of our cruise per se, a day at sea on the way to the port of Valpariso, Chile. We will have a day in Valpariso and then will head home from Santiago. We sleep in a bit. In the morning, we receive instructions on disembarkation procedures for tomorrow. As mentioned, we have booked a bus tour that will take us through Valpariso and the surrounding area and eventually deposit us at the airport in Santiago. Today we attend three lectures: the history of scurvy, bird ringing (or banding), and magic. The latter deserves some explanation. Devlin, the magician who entertained us previously, puts on an afternoon workshop on simple magic tricks or "actions," as he calls them. He shows us nine different tricks, demonstrating each one first and then explaining ... read more

The ship arrives in Puerto Montt around 8 am and we are tended to shore and on a bus by 9:30. This is a full-day excursion of the city and the surrounding area. The weather is cloudy and rainy but fairly warm at about 15°C. Puerto Montt, named for a former Chilean president, is an attractive but mostly industrial city of 180,000 people. The big industry in town is salmon farming, which has been going on for about a decade. About four years ago, there was a disease crisis with the fish that caused the complete collapse of the industry, but it is now healthy again. The other interesting thing about the area is that it was originally settled by Germans around 1850, and the various towns retain a certain Teutonic charm. Puerto Montt is literally ... read more

Another dreary day at sea. It's raining and the sea is still very rough. Our companions are under the weather and stay mostly in their cabin. Our day is essentially spent attending lectures: Chris Wilson on butterflies, moths, dragonflies and damsel files; two lectures by David Wilson on Darwin in the Galapagos and on the theory of evolution; and Benjamin on the history of Chile and our last two ports of call, Puerto Montt and Valpariso/Santiago. I must say that the lectures have been one of the outstanding features of this cruise. Benjamin, the travel adviser, the Wilson brothers and the other experts have been excellent and very accessible. Speaking of dragonflies, an interesting fact is that there still are a very few dragonflies left from the hundreds that decided to join our cruise in Montevideo. ... read more

We awake to a rainy, foggy day and behave accordingly—like lazy slugs. We have now exited the Strait of Magellan on the west side and are heading north into the region known as the Chilean Fjords, consisting of countless islands and bays carved out by retreating glaciers some 10,000 years ago and then flooded by the sea. However, we can see very little because of the weather. Attended lectures on the voyages of the Beagle (with and without Darwin aboard), on Antarctic explorations and their relationship to Darwinism, and on the geology of the Earth. The weather clears around 2 pm, revealing a similar scene to what we saw on previous days: rugged rocky islands and mainland, punctuated by ribbon-like streams cascading from the heights, and in the distance wonderful snow-capped mountains. Magnificent vistas that have ... read more

Up early (6 am). In the night, the ship has entered the Beagle Channel from the east, and it docks in Ushuaia, Argentina about 7 pm. We are off the boat and on a bus tour by 8. Our destination is Tierra del Fuego National Park, about 15k away from the city. And once again we are blessed to have a gorgeous sunny day with light variable clouds, a rarity in these parts. The park was created in 1960 to protect the area spanning the southern tip of the Andes Mountains. The mountains run east/west here; the Andes actually extend out eastward right into the ocean to form the Falklands, South Georgia and the other islands of the south Atlantic, and then swing around in an s-shape under the ocean to emerge as the backbone of ... read more

The fog has mostly lifted by morning, but it is still very variable. This will be a complete day at sea as we negotiate the Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America. We expect to pass close to Cape Horn sometime in the evening on our way to Ushuaia, Argentina. As the day goes by, the waves grow higher and higher, and by the afternoon the swells are running up to 30 ft. Because of our direction, conditions are not as violent as the passage to the Falklands, when the ship was bashing into the oncoming waves, but the ship is certainly pitching significantly. Dishes and occasionally people go sliding to the floor in the dining room. One basically has to keep a hand on something solid all the time to avoid making a spectacle. Later ... read more

The captain wakes us this morning around 8 am once again. We have arrived during the night at Paradise Harbour, a natural shelter formed by two islands and the mainland. This location, delineated by mountains and glaciers on all sides and sheltered from stormy seas, must have seemed a relative paradise to whomever named it. It is a brilliant sunny day with wispy clouds, and the beauty of the surroundings once again takes our breath away. There are two research stations here: Brown Station, an Argentinian facility, and a Chilean station named for a Chilean president who was the first head of state to visit the Antarctic continent. Both stations have interesting histories. Brown Station is famous for having once been burned to the ground by a scientist who went crazy. The Chilean station stands on ... read more

It's New Year's Eve! During the night we were supposed to enter Bransfield Strait, which divides King George Island from Antarctic's Trinity Peninsula in the Palmer Archipelago. However, again there was too much ice, so we turned around in the night and are now sailing around King George Island on the ocean side. The captain hopes to backtrack and enter the strait from the opposite end. It's a grey day with patchy fog on relatively calm waters. Vi and I take a stroll outside before breakfast. It's about 1°C and quite pleasant, but we can't see much. We do, however, catch sight of a series of whale plumes and some finned black backs in the distance. The truth is that it has turned into a rather bland day. We are out of sight of visible land ... read more